Agentic UK right-to-work check, digital identity verification coordination, and Home Office statutory excuse evidence pack service for small employers (1–30 staff) hiring non-UK nationals or using the online share-code route. Replaces the HR consultant or immigration adviser who charges £150–£400 per hire to conduct the correct check type, document it in the prescribed format, and produce the employer's statutory excuse file — a process where a single error exposes the employer to a £45,000 civil penalty per illegal worker under the 2024 penalty uplift.
Why now
No live signal batch today; grounded in confirmed policy: Home Office illegal working civil penalty increase to £45,000 effective February 2024 (gov.uk/government/publications/illegal-working-penalties) — a structural forcing function creating immediate, recurring demand from every small employer making new hires.
Commercial value
Home Office raised illegal working civil penalties to £45,000 per worker (Feb 2024) — making this existentially urgent. UK SMEs make ~800,000 non-UK hires/yr; even targeting the 10% using share-code or IDVT routes = 80,000 addressable checks. At £49/check or £199/mo subscription for up to 10 checks, a solo founder needs only 100 monthly subscribers for £24k ARR — highly achievable via accountant and recruiter referrals.
Go-to-market
Partner with small business accountants and payroll bureaus (who see every new hire) for referral commission. Post in r/UKJobs, r/smallbusiness, and HR Director LinkedIn groups. Lead magnet: free right-to-work check-type decision tool. Charge £49/check or £199/mo for ≤10 checks. First 10 customers via cold email to 50-person recruitment agencies who outsource RTW admin.
2-week MVP
Single feature: employer inputs hire details (nationality, visa type, share code or physical document) via a Tally form; LLM cross-references against the current gov.uk right-to-work guidance matrix and outputs a 2-page statutory excuse evidence document (check type, date, method, expiry reminder) as a branded PDF. Cut: automated share-code API calls, IDVT provider integration, bulk upload. Day-1 outcome: employer has a correctly formatted statutory excuse document for a single hire — the exact file they need if audited by the Home Office.
Agent score
0.61 — Commercial score is strong — named penalty budget (£45,000 exposure), recurring trigger (every hire), and clear willingness to pay; speed is very high because MVP is a form-to-PDF LLM workflow with no API dependencies, shippable in under a week; defensibility is low because the underlying guidance is public and a competitor can replicate easily — moat only builds if employer records accumulate into an audit-trail SaaS with expiry tracking.
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Solve Studio is an independent AI automation and product studio founded by James Pates, working out of Brighton and London with clients across the UK. Get in touch at james@solve-studio.co.